You’ve Got Three Seconds to Make an Impact
It’s said that an email recipient will first look at who sent an email to determine whether they delete it and will then look at the subject line to determine whether they will open it . . . all within three seconds! All the more reason to pay particular attention to creating compelling and action-oriented subject lines.
A sender name or email address that is not familiar to the recipient will have a significant negative impact on your email campaign and a subject line that isn’t well thought out could cause the email to get caught in spam filters, be completely ignored by your recipient or worse cause your subscribers to unsubscribe.
We focus a lot of energy on creating the email (which is great) but often there isn’t the same thought and detail put into who the sender should be and what the subject line is. The sending email address (from name) should have a community or company name and ideally be from the sales agent or the person who has been working with the prospect. Do not use web-based email addresses with domains such as hotmail, or gmail. Consistency is very important.
The subject line is really the most important thing to get right in order to get your message read. The following are a few dos and don’ts for creating subject lines:
- Do not use excessive text in caps. (In fact, try to avoid it altogether.) And, do not use special characters or multiple exclamation marks.
- Avoid the use of spam-type words. Free, Mortgage, Special Offer and Act Now can cause your email to be sent to a spam filter.
- Ensure that the first sentence of the body of your email and your subject line are different. If they are the same, this will flag the email provider that it could be spam
- If the company name is not clear in the sender email, then ensure that you include the project name or company name within the subject line.
- Ensure that your subject line relates to the call to action within your email. Create a sense of urgency with your offer.
- Try to keep your subject line to under 50 characters.
Put yourself in the recipients’ shoes! Everyone’s inboxes are over-crowded and lack of time is an issue. Be concise and to the point – don’t be too vague . If you are going to resend an email to those recipients who didn’t open the first time, change it up a bit. Take a critical look at the subject line and update it.
Email is a quick way to broadcast a message but it needs to be done with care and thought! Do you have other tips? Let us know.
